Tag Archives: Alaska

Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend is the closest thing to a Basic Income that exists in the world today. It gives every U.S. Citizen who fills out a form verifying Alaska residency a check for a share of the revenue from the Alaska Permanent Fund each year. The fund and dividend—on their own—are on solid financial footing. Left alone, they can

[Josh Martin] In this post, Hartmann discusses the alarming inequality in West Virginia as well as the extreme poverty many families face in the coal-reliant state. Hartmann acknowledges coal’s importance to the state by suggesting implementing a program similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which distributes a dividend funded by taxes on its oil reserves to each citizen of Alaska

The idea of a basic income for all citizens is often seen as a utopian dream. But, as this article explains, ‘the Alaska Dividend’ has existed for more than thirty years, and is immensely popular to this day. Karl Widerquist is an Associate Professor at SFS-Q, Georgetown University. He is the editor of Basic Income News and the Basic Income

This video is a group discussion in which host Chris Hayes talks to his panel about the idea of giving Americans money just for being citizens. The discussion is inspired mostly by Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. Chirs Hayes, “Money for being a US citizen?” All In With Chris Hayes, MSNBC Television, January 7, 2014.

Written as response to the article, “Six Lessons from the Alaska Model,” by Karl Widerquist, C.A. L’Hirondelle, Frederik Schenk, and Eric Manneschmidt argue that resource dividends are not a good source of funding for a basic income because, “The Alaska Permanent Fund and concepts like it are created to corrupt people into accepting a business that they might otherwise strongly

The Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) has reached an all-time in a year in which Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) will probably reach its lowest level since 1987. The PDF is Alaska’s small, variable, yearly basic income. It’s financed by the returns of the APF. You’d think, then, that the fund and the dividend financed by it would move up and down together. And they do—on average, over the long-run, with a time-lag. But they don’t necessarily move together in any particular year, and this year the difference is extreme.

Basic income is a regular unconditional cash grant paid to all citizens without any means test or work requirement. It’s often dismissed as a utopian idea. However, a basic income, or something very close to it, exists today in Alaska. It’s called the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) or sometimes “the Alaska Dividend.” The PFD has been paying annual dividends to Alaskans since 1982 with no conditions except citizenship, residency, and the willingness to fill out a form. After following the Alaska Dividend since 1999, and I want to share six lessons that supporters of progressive economic policy should learn from what I call “the Alaska model,” but first some basic background.